Australia is the only continent where the entire indigenous population maintained a single kind of adaptation—hunting and gathering—into modern times. Although they have many cultural features in common with other hunter-gatherer peoples, the Aborigines are perhaps unique in the degree of contrast between the complexity of their social organization and religious life and the relative simplicity of their material technologies. (For a discussion of the name given to the indigenous people of Australia, seeResearcher’s Note: Aborigines and self-designation.)